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Father
Robert Ballecer: This episode of Know-How is brought to you by
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Today on Know How we have augmented
reality for your car, a thrust tester for your quad copter, and a Game Boy mod,
and don’t forget your questions our answers. Know How is next.

Welcome to Know How, the Twit show
where we build, bend, break and upgrade. I’m father Robert Ballecer.

Bryan
Burnett: And I’m
Bryan Burnett.

Fr.
Robert: For the
next 45 to 80 minutes, we are going to be taking you through some of the
projects that we have been doing so that you can take them home and geek out
all on your own.

Bryan: That’s right to cut as we are
pretty big geeks and there are a few stories that pique our interest during the
week and this one is pretty cool. Because I’m a big fan of augmented reality,
I’ve played with the Samsung VR goggles, but this one applies to cars.

Fr.
Robert: This one is
specifically to cars. We’ve seen more and more AR technology which is augmented
reality versus VR. People are more familiar with VR. Because
that is the original.The Nintendo? Was that
the original Game Boy? It was horrible. It was in no way VR.

Bryan: Yeah, I had a headache for about
two hours after that.

Fr.
Robert: But it is
actually interesting technology. Especially since some companies have stepped
it up on what kind of 360 video you can take. But, whereas I see virtual
reality is more games stuff.

Bryan: More of an immersive world. You get
into it. Where AR is more like an overlay of the existing
surroundings.

Fr.
Robert: We’ve seen
this when Microsoft made their big announcement with the Windows 10 and the
glasses. And this is the whole idea. Overlays staff onto the actual world. Not
digitally composited, not recorded and played back, but for example I could
have glasses on and it is looking at you and saying Cranky_hippo with your twitter address, your Facebook address. What BMW announced this last
week is that they our showing off the prototype of a mini that uses AR glasses
to give you a plethora of information. For example, not just the speed of your
car and give you the vital statistics like your RPM and gas consumption but
also you look around and as you look around it will overlay the speed of the
cars that are near you. So you know how fast they are going.

Bryan: So if you are going on the freeway
you wait to see that person that is going just a little bit faster than you and
they will be the buffer.

Fr.
Robert: Exactly. The CHP folk. But then it gets more useful when you start
combining it with GPS. So you can actually see a line that shows you where you
should be driving. Or, they showed this off on the demo. I really like this.
The idea of putting the business names on buildings so you know what they are
as they pass. And finding open parking spots. It is like lighting them up. This
would actually fit in your car. It is a cool system.

Bryan: This is all really cool. And I
think you covered this earlier on the radio. The amount of information that can
be pushed to you, there may have to be some limiting factors because you
wouldn’t want to be driving by and eyes cream shop and then all of a sudden
think ice cream shop over here, here’s our advertisement. There is so much data
that could be presented.

Fr.
Robert: The systems
are great and they work really well. They are very cool. They are ought
inspiring but you are absolutely right. You don't look nerdy at all. But you
can get too much information. And people are getting overwhelmed as it is right
now with the modern car, the data screen.

Bryan: In the watches that we have now. Giving us notifications.

Fr.
Robert: That it
might actually be a generational thing, I think people are starting to get a
little bit better at least with the younger generation. The
millennial’s.With filtering out and fixing their
interfaces so that they get just the right amount of information. So
maybe I don’t need my text messages popping up on my AR glasses. Maybe I don’t
need the speed of the cars around me, but having a GPS would be very helpful. Without having to look down at a screen.Or
helping me to find a parking spot. It would cut down frustration. Or,
like in this case, this is a art glass that would allow you to see a view from your quad copter so that you
don’t have to have glasses blocking out your peripheral vision.

Bryan: You have described to me that it is
a lot easier for you to be able to see footage from the quad copter but also
have one I available to see the quad copter from where you are standing so that
you can move around objects and things more freely. It is certainly a direction
that I am excited about. I think coming from a generation that played a lot of
video games, the first thing I imagine is a heads-up display where may be if I
am on a track or something like that it shows me where the apex and the turn
is, it shows me how hard I should be breaking or what my corner speed should be
before I hit the apex. That sort of thing I love that idea.

Fr.
Robert: I think
what I can say and I am pretty confident in this, is that AR is coming. You
can’t stop it. It is too good of a technology and it is too useful to say it is
a fad, it is going to fall out. It is actually a
useful piece. The question is whether or not you are going to find a company
that will find the proper interface/balance between too much information and
not enough information.

Bryan: It is going to be… we are if the
very cusp of this new technology so there is definitely going to be some growing
pains and there is going to be some trial and error of figuring out the best
way to implement these technologies. But, having something that without having
to look away and just focus on the road but be able the like I need to turn at
this intersection instead of trying to see street signs and things like that.
It is good. It is going to be cool.

Fr.
Robert: In the
future you will have AR. The only question is whether or not you will be able
to process the data.

Bryan: Oh man. Processing.

Fr.
Robert: Speaking of
processing. You have been learning a project the last couple of weeks. I have
seen you down in the Know Hole and you have been super dedicated on this. Last
time, we took a look at your Game Boy project where you actually fixed a screen
because you were getting the lines down the screen. But you decided to go one
step further and fix something that the original Game Boy owners always kind of
dreaded. And that is, without it back light you either had to have some ambient
light or you had a little LED that hooked up to the game port.

Bryan: Oh yeah, the little warm light?
That was bad. And actually is that, who is thankfully covering for Alex today,
he sent me a perfect gift for this. It was a little comic and it was the
children of the past will never know the pain of writing in the backseat of the
car and having to wait for streetlights to go by in order to move on the
screen.

Fr.
Robert: Our
portable devices didn’t have backlights folks. And they didn’t have nice bright
screens and we didn’t even have a color screen. That, you’ve figured out a way
to actually upgrade an original Game Boy or one of the many versions of it, so
that it does.

Bryan: This is one of the things I was geeking out about. It is definitely not new technology that
you get a really cheap LED panel and you are able to place it right behind the
original panel and then you have the backlit screen and you don’t have to worry
about having direct sunlight and playing. It scratches that nostalgic itch.
But, instead of talking about it I will show you the video of that right now.

Bryan: So it wasn’t enough just to fix the
screen on our Game Boy, but we need to improve the Game Boy. And there is no
better way to do that then adding a backlight to it. Because these screens are
notoriously hard to see unless you are in direct light. So the kit that I
purchased came with just the LCD panel, a resistor, and a polarization shield.
We will get into what each of those do as we go along. But of course, the first
thing to do is going to be to disassemble your Game Boy. In the back there will
be four tri-wing bits, we will remove those along with batteries underneath the
battery cover. And then it is time to remove the circuit board. Once you have
all of those Philips screws taken out, we can un-attach
the front panel from the back panel from the little ribbon. Once you have the
front panel disassembled and taken off you are going to want to focus on the
two screws here on the front by the screen. Underneath this is where we are
going to be able to detach the screen from the board. Also on the back of this
board there are three little clips that hold in the plastic piece that the LCD
panel sits in. You are going to want to detach those clips once you pop the
frame out. If you are lucky enough to have an iFixit kit
like I do, you can use one of the plastic sponge or is
to pry the screen up. But it should come up with very little effort or force.
Underneath you can see there are a couple of pads that help push the LCD screen
up from the board. And here is where we are going to have to be pretty
delicate. You are going to need a razor blade or something like tweezers or
something like that to get underneath the reflective panel that is behind the
LCD screen. Now, the first time I did this I did not have a problem with
tearing. But the second time I did have a little bit of a tear, so be careful and take your time. Definitely try not to scratch
the glass, which fortunately I didn’t. Work your way underneath the reflective
panel and just kind of pry it back a little bit at a time. What I had to end up
doing with the screen is try the other corner down below and pry from there. Because I had already torn it at the top. So just take your
time, pull the back. These reflective screens are on there pretty good. But once you have it completely removed, you will want to get a
hold of some alcohol or some other cleaning solution. Really make sure to clean
off any leftover glue that could be on the back of the panel. Because anything that is left there is going to show up through
your screen. If you are like me it is going to piss you off. Definitely
clean off the screen as best you can. Get a chamois to kind of breath out any fingerprints or anything on the back of the
screen. The next step is going to be getting your needle nose pliers and we are
going to have to cut a little trough in the little plastic holster for the LCD. So that the wires for the backlit screen can flow through and
will have easier access soldering them to the board. We need to make
enough room so that the wires don’t get bunched up along the frame. The next
step is going to be installing the LCD panel. So before you take off the
protective tape, I would recommend placing it underneath and making sure
everything fits properly. Once you do, make sure the wires stick down below.
Remove the protective tape on the panel and then place it underneath the LCD.
The next thing you’re going to want to do is take out the polarization shield.
What this does it polarizes the LCD screen so it will give you contrast. There
is actually something we will be doing later that will improve this. But for
the time being if you are just doing the backlight place the polarization so
that the concave side is facing up. You don’t want it to touch or press against
the glass because then you will have little places where it is pressing against
the glass and it won’t look as clean. You want to have it so that the concave
is facing up. Place it underneath so that if you see that it is dark, that
means the polarization is not correct. You will want to rotate it 90° until it
looks clear and not like you are looking for sunglasses. Once you have done
that, and made sure that everything fits in there properly you can clean the
screen a little bit making sure you don’t have any dust back there. Once you
do, that will really anger people. The next thing we are going to need to do is
warm up the soldering iron because we will be soldering the red and black wire
to the board. Now if your Game Boy board is anything like mine, it had a little
bit of a soldering overflow here just from the
factory. So I am going to clean up the tips so that I don’t get my soldering
contacts mixed up. Make sure they are definitely separated. The black wire will
go to the right of the capacitor and the red wire will go to the left. The
first thing you want to do is get a little solder on the end of the wire and
what this will allow you to do is when you have a little bit of solder on the
end of the wire you can then use tweezers or something like that to hold it
against the soldering point on the board and then with just one hand use the
solder in the other hand and that is kind of a trick that you can do to get it
to stick to the board the way you want. So next I will be doing the red wire
which will be going on the left of the capacitor. I will strip the outer
coating with this pair of strippers and I have cut the wire that to the
appropriately that I want. You don’t what extra wire hanging out and touching
the pad were getting underneath the buttons. Should’ve done
that with the black wire. I could always go back and do that later if I
want. Same thing applies here with putting solder on the red wire, but we are
also going to be attaching a resistor. You are going to want to put the resistor
on there, it will help give longer life to your LED panel and if you are
playing a game with multiple contrast, the problem I was having without putting
the resistor on there was that certain games just would not load. Not really
sure what that was about. Tin the tip of the red wire and then attach the
resistor to the red wire and then once you have that, measure out the resistor
to the length of the resistor wire to the next soldering point which is just
above the capacitor. Now I have my capacitor attached to the red wire and I can
cut the link that I need it to be to go to the other soldering joint. I have
added a little bit of solder to the joints so that I can get the resistor to
stick to it. And there we go. Now we have the resistor in-place with the red
wire on the left and the black wire is soldered straight to the joint soldering
point on the board. Make sure you your wires are neatly tucked away and not
going out over where the buttons might be. Now it is time to test sub but the
batteries back into the back panel of the Game Boy and if you have done
everything right, which she should have if you followed the steps, it will have
a colored backlit screen. You can choose from a variety of colors but for this
one I was doing it for my brother Greg and he wanted green. I have to say it
looks pretty cool. Definitely improves on the original Game Boy. And now that
we have made sure everything worked properly we are going to put it back
together. Make sure to clean the screen and definitely double check if there is
anything behind it. But the two screws back in the front that
were holding that brown piece of plastic. And, reassemble. Same steps as
when you took it apart, and you should be good to go. For all of these parts
and other accessories I will have links in the show notes so check out our show
page that you can get the LCD screen for pretty cheap and you can also get new
replacement cover screens because those tend to be very scratched up from the
old days. Those are really cheap to replace and you can attach them very
easily.

Fr.
Robert: That is
actually not As hard as I thought it was going to be.

Bryan: Yeah. One
resistor and very minimal soldering, and as long as you take your time and are
a little bit delicate. If you have an iFixit kit, it makes the whole process a lot easier.

Fr.
Robert: Especially
when you get into electronics kits like this one. You’ve got to have the right
tools. If you go in there with the wrong size driver you are going to start prying off components.

Bryan: And you don’t want to start
stripping the tri-wing screws. But it is kind of fun to take something apart
that is 25 years old and it is a circuit board from a time when you could take
it apart and individually solder the things yourself if you wanted.

Fr.
Robert: Isn’t that
weird? Because if you open up a Game Boy, tech from the 80s and 90s, you’ve got
individual resistors and everything looks like the old timey resistors. Now if
you open up electronics it is all surface mount and unless you are really good,
you can’t really de-solder or re-solder or anything.

Bryan: It is possible, I tried to take apart a more recent DS. I had a cracked screen or something I
try to take it apart and it was a real pain.

Fr.
Robert: It is gone
now.

Bryan: It is gone now because I never
finished it. I couldn’t get at the little bits that I needed.

Fr.
Robert: So what is
next? Now that you have got the screen replaced and you have a backlight, where
else do you want to go with the Nintendo/gaming world?

Bryan: So, the nice thing about these old
Nintendo’s is there is a lot of nostalgia. A lot of people still like playing
with these. And there is this whole music that has grown from it called chip
tunes. So, I will be getting into loading your own chip tune ROM on a custom
cartridge but also we have added a back light that there is another little chip
that you can solder to the board that is called a Viber and it will invert the
contrast of the screen and when you flip the polarization on it, it actually gives
you more contrast. So the screen is nice. It is a lot better than it was, but
you can get even more contrast out of it. So it is just making this little guy
even better. And you can add a pro sound kit. So it bypasses the original audio
stuff.

Fr.
Robert:Which is not great.

Bryan: Yeah, it has some issues.

Fr.
Robert: So this
project got some life.

Bryan: It is fun to play with this old
piece of tech and the whole reason I started playing with this is because I
wanted to put a Raspberry Pi inside of a Game Boy. I came to the conclusion
that I didn’t want to destroy my old Game Boy. I like it too much. So I was
like I want to make the game way better that you know what I’m going to do next
now that I have the 3-D printer? I want to print a Game Boy-esque case and put a Raspberry Pi inside.

Fr.
Robert: We are
toying around with this idea of a Rasp Pi Game Boy for a while. But you were
going to have to destroy the thing.

Bryan: And we did that with the NES and
the NES was a great project that was a lot of fun. But I feel a little bad
about gutting the NES. It was broken, I didn’t even
have any of the parts. But using a dremel tool on the
back of a NES case, I was like this hurts. But, it was a fun project.

Fr.
Robert: We’ve got plenty more Game Boy action coming for you. So stay tuned for
that. We come back we are going to come back and take a little of this. This is
the thrust tester that we have been playing with. Remember we looked at this two weeks ago. This was a way to figure out how much
thrust your motors were generating so you can better design your quad copters.
We are going to give you an upgrade for this to make it a super duper advanced
thrust tester. But before we do that let’s go ahead and take a break because we
want to thank the first sponsor of this episode of Know How.

Fr.
Robert: Now, Bryan,
you know putting payments onto your website is not always easy. We talk about
this in Coding 101 it is one thing to be a good developer on code, but when it
comes to actually handling people’s financials, you can’t have a mistake.

Bryan: For that sort of thing I want to
just to be able to focus on my project and leave the finance stuff to something
else.

Fr.
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Fr.
Robert: Bryan,
super-duper thrust tester. So we were playing around with this, this is just
basically a Turnigy thrust tester you can buy this
right off of the Hobby King website in fact we have a link for this. This was
under $50, I think I got it for $48.75.

Bryan: It feels really solid.

Fr.
Robert: All it is, is a scale that will measure how hard an engine is
pulling. So as it generates more thrust that number is going to go up and tell
us it is creating more grams of thrust. Now, you’ve also got a Turnigy power meter that I am going to add here. What this
will allow you to do is it will allow you to get more information than just
dressed. Remember when we last covered this we said that was a drawback. Thrust
is great but what is it doing to your power system?

Bryan: Right. And you want to see how many
amps, and what the wattage is.

Fr.
Robert: Right
because it doesn’t matter if you’ve got super powerful motors that can give you
a lot of thrust if you’re ES sees aren’t going to be able to handle it. You
want that kind of information. There are a couple of other things you are going
to want. This would be old hat if you built any of our projects for quad
copters. You are going to want an electronic speed controller and in this case
I am using Ready To Fly Quads red controller. Which are about $10 a pop. Very inexpensive but they have a very
nice overhead and they scale up beautifully. That is why I have been using them
for all my quad copter projects. And also you are going to want 4 mm, 3.5 mm,
and 2 mm bullet connectors. You will see in the project why I want you to have
all those different types.

Bryan: We’ve gone over bullet connectors
and they are pretty handy to have.

Fr.
Robert: And also
there is silicone wire. I didn’t put a link for this just because people are
going to have their own source. I typically get it off of eBay but I also buy
in bulk because I know that I am going to be using it. As for tools, you are
going to need a wire cutter, wire stripper, soldering kit, and that should be
pretty much it. It is a very easy mod but instead of talking about it why don’t
we go ahead and show them.

Fr.
Robert: The Turnegy Thrust Measuring stand is a great way to learn how
much thrust a motor prop, battery combo can generate. But hobbyists know that
it is a bit more than how much power you can deliver. You will also need to
know how many amps will be drawn, what is the sweet spot of a
combo, and what is safe. We are going to build a grid that cannot only
give you all that information but is flexible enough to do it across a variety
of motors, batteries and props. You need a few things for this build. On the
tool site you will need wired’s and insulation
strippers, can’t shrink tubing and a heat source, a soldering kit and some
helping hands. As for raw materials you will want four sets of 4 mm bullet
connectors, three sets of 3.5 mm bullet connectors, three female 2 mm
connectors, a female XT connector, and lengths of black and red 14 and 18gauge
silicon wire. You will also need a brushless speed controller preferably
something in the 30 amp range. A servo tester and a high amperage power source.
Like this Turnigy 4S 5000 Ml amp hour 20c. If you are
going to use an ESC that doesn’t include a battery eliminator circuit then you
will also need a separate unit BEC to provide power to the servo tester. The
heart of our system is a Turnigy two in one power and
servo meter. Connected between our power source and our ESC it is 1.5 inch screen
can give the information about voltage, amperage, wattage and power. We could
just solder everything together but we want a flexible kit. One
that can use a variety of power sources and motors so the following
instructions will show you how to make the various connectors and adapters that
give our thrust bench flexibility. The first step is to attach four
millimeter bullets to both the input and output leads of the two in one tester.
The tester can handle up to 100 A of current and the 12gauge wire is rated for
the same so we need a connector that can handle that much juice. Therefore, 4 mm bullets. First slip the connector over the
power needs, this can be a little tricky because every
4 mm connector uses a male and female bullet. But they have to be swapped on
either end. Just remember that if it is a source of power than the female
bullet which which needs the larger side of the cover
goes on the positive lead. If it is a device that needs to be supplied power,
also known as load, then the female bullet goes on the negative lead. Double
check this and make sure you get it right because if you slide the cover on
wrong and start soldering, you are going to have to de-solder or snip the wires
to swap sides. Soldering a 4 mm bullet connector is the same as soldering smaller
sizes. Except that the solder Is much larger. Heat the
connector until it flows solder and then fill it about halfway. Insert your
lead and keep applying heat until you see the solder on the lead start to flow.
Then remove heat and hold the wires still until the solder hardens repeat the
process three more times, remembering that on the source side of the tester you
are going to want the female connector on the negative lead and the male
connector on the positively. While on the load side you will want the female
connector on the positive lead and the male connector on the negative. I’m
going to repeat this a few more times just because it is super frustrating if
you get it wrong. The 4 mm leads are perfect for high current batteries but we
want to be able to use XT 60 equipped to batteries without having to snip and
solder. So we are going to make up a 4mm XT 60 adapter. Start by cutting about
4 inches of 14gauge silicon wire. We are using 14gauge instead of 12gauge
because 12guage doesn’t easily fit into a XT 60 connector. And XT60 batteries
don’t require a 12 gauge wire. strip about 8 mm from
the side of the wires that will connect to the 4 mm connector and 10 mm from
the side that will connect to the XT 60. Then tin both ends of your wire. We
want to first solder a female XT 60 connector onto the wires. This can get
tricky because XT 60 connectors will deform and melt if too much heat is
applied. So I use a loose smell connects her to hold shape and put the entire
assembly into my helping hands.The lead on to the conductor with a short application of heat and
solder. Then apply heat directly to the lead. One solder begins to flow,
apply enough solder to fill the cup and secure the lead. You want to spend as
little time as possible applying heat, never more than a few seconds at a time. And when you are done with one lead weight until the
connector cools before soldering the second. Once both leads have been
soldered onto the XT 60 use 3/8th inch heat shrink tubing to insulate the
conductors and wires. Now let’s take care of the other side of the adapter. We
want to solder the female 4 mm bullet connector to the positive lead and the
male 4mm connector to the negative lead. Make sure you slip on the cover with a
larger side on the positive lead for you start soldering. Solder the bullets as
before then slip the cover onto the conductors. You now have the ability to use
either 4mm or XT60 equipped batteries on the source side of the tester, but we
need to assemble the load side in a similar fashion. I’m using a red series 30
amp ESC from Ready To Fly Quads. It comes with no
connectors and pre-tinned leads so it is a simple matter of soldering 4mm
bullet connectors onto the power leads with the female connector on the
negative power lead and the male connector on the positive lead. And 3.5 mm bullets on each of the three motor leads.Once the female 3.5 mm connectors are soldered to make sure to
insulate the connector with wire and 3/8th inch heat shrink tubing. The
control lead from the ESC connects to one of the sets of out pens on the servo tester.
Just make sure to match at the positive, negative and signal leads as shown on
the casing. Once it is connected we can do a quick test. Connect the motor with
3.5 mm bullets then connect power to the ESC. First making
sure that the black will be going to black and red to red. Connect the
battery to the ESC, turning the knob on the servo tester should increase and
decrease speed of the connected motor. Connecting the two in one tester between
the battery and the ESC should let you see some power readings. If you are
using a brand-new ESC make sure to calibrated by
turning it on with the servo tester turn to fool until you hear the beep then
turn it down to minimum until you hear the beep. The setup as is will allow us
to test motors with 3.5 mm power leads and up to 30 A of power draw from
batteries with 4 mm or XT 60 connectors. But let’s go one step further and make
adapters for testing motors with 2 mm bullets. We need three male 3.5 mm
connectors, three female 2 mm connectors, and three 2 inch lengths of 18gauge
wire. Strip 4 mm of insulation from each end and tin your wires. Then solder
one side into a male 3.5 mm connector and the other end into a 2 mm connector. Heat shrink the conductors and now you have a way to connect
2 mm motors into your testing system. Using the system is simple. Mount your motor
onto the thrust end, connect your ESC using the appropriate bullet connector,
connect the ESC to the servo tester and the two in one tester and then supply
power to the two in one tester. Manipulating the servo tester will throttle the
motor up and down. And now you are seeing not only thrust numbers but amperage,
voltage and wattage values as well. Your thrust bench will work with any XT 60
or 4 mm equipped battery and can deliver up to 30 A to any 3.5 or 2 mm equipped
motor. Happy testing.

Fr.
Robert: I am going
to have to make this pretty. This has all the functions that I want including
the really cool screen so I can figure out wattage and amperage and voltage.

Bryan: This is coming from an engineer
standpoint.

Fr.
Robert: This is not
very pretty. But the nice thing about this system is that if you follow the
instructions that I gave in the video, you will literally have adapters for
everything. So this will work with these larger capacity batteries that have
the big 4 mm plugs on them. It will work with the XT 60 batteries which is what
you are used to. And it will work with the 3.5 or the 2 mm equipped motors. So
this really is a universal tester if you are building a quad copter. We saw last
week how important it is for you to know exactly how much performance you are
getting out of your motors.

Bryan: It seems like a very versatile
setup. And if you are planning on doing a few different builds and you are not
really sure which kind you want to do, this is probably something you want to
set up. So you have a pretty good idea of what your engines are doing.

Fr.
Robert: Right. Because anyone can put numbers on a box. But you really need
to know if those numbers are real. I do want to do one thing before we move on.
And that is, last time we did a thrust tester we looked at two different
motorists and they were hovering near the 800 g range. That is how much thrust they
can generate. Well, this motor I told you was more impressive because this also
supported 4 amps. It is more voltage which means it is going to turn faster. We
also upgraded our ESC, the Ready To Fly verses that
little hobby thing that we had. This will support four SP batteries and it
doesn’t sap as much performance. So what I want to show you very quickly is our pull, again it is hard to see on the camera. So,
watch that number. Let’s see how much I can get off of a full burn on this. So…

Bryan: Before, we had somewhere in the 800
range.

Fr.
Robert: With a full
battery this could pull 1200 to 1300. That is a lot of power. So, put this into
perspective. This one motor with this set up generates twice as much thrust as
all of the motors on that little 250 that we built.

Bryan: And have you flown this set up with
this much thrust?

Fr.
Robert: It is
scary. That is kind of what it is when you are building these things. You play
with something until you are comfortable and then when you are comfortable you
move up to something that scares you again. And when you lose the fear then you
build something else.

Bryan: I don’t know. I feel that this is
kind of a level where the fear would just stay.

Fr.
Robert: Now, this
scary thing about this is that I actually could go with a higher battery. My
understanding is that you could push this motor to 2 kg before the windings
actually start to melt. But that is not good. The other thing is, the motor will actually start to heat up. So you kind of
have to balance it. For example this peaked out at 1200 g, but at 1200 grams if
you held that for two minutes you will cook the motor. There is so much heat
generated. Now, we will be bringing you more testing projects for quad copters.
Because I don’t know about you but for me I love flying quad copters that I
enjoy building them more.

Bryan: I have noticed that. And I enjoy
flying them and letting you build them.

Fr.
Robert: This is a
good combo. So I will build them, you fly them. And then crash and I will
rebuild them. Now when we come back we are going to be jumping into your
questions. You’ve had some really good questions the last couple of weeks so we
want to give you a couple of minutes to make sure that we can provide you with
some insight. But before we do that let’s thank the second sponsor of this
episode of Know How.

Fr.
Robert: Bryan, do
you sleep at night?

Bryan: It is one of the few things that I
am good at.

Fr.
Robert: I would put
my stuff on the pro level for good sleeping.

Bryan: I’ve seen the example that you
provided in the Know Hole.

Fr.
Robert: That is
actually a very good thing. That happens because my bed right now is not great.
It is actually kind of bad.

Bryan: But if it was better you may not
fall asleep at work?

Fr.
Robert: How many
times have we read studies that correlate bad sleep with poor performance? It
is not just I am tired and I need to take a nap, it is bad decision-making. Bad productivity. It means that you are staring at your
screen and you are just kind of zoning out. That is what ill-sleep does for you
because it is strange how many of us will spend a lot of money on our computer,
will spend a lot of money on our tools, will spend a lot of money on our toys
but when it comes to sleep we buy the cheapest thing.

Bryan: And you spend a third of your life
sleeping.

Fr.
Robert: More like a
half. Half of my life sleeping, why don’t I take it more and
seriously. Well folks, you can if you use Casper. Casper is a sponsor
for this episode of Know How and Casper is a way to get a comfortable, good
bed. With good sleep and great characteristics without having
to go through the rigmarole of buying a traditional mattress. When you
buy a traditional mattress you go to a store, and they have a couple of demo
unit. What can you really tell from 60 seconds of laying on something?

Bryan: I want to use it before I go to
work the next day.

Fr.
Robert: Precisely.
And that is what you get with Casper. Casper actually gives you more than three
months to take home one of these mattresses, use that, see if it actually does
everything it says it’s going to do and then at the end you get to decide
whether or not you are going to keep it.

Bryan: But I live in an apartment and it
is really hard to get a mattress up some stairs and stuff.

Fr.
Robert: You can get
it delivered. You know what, you’ve got to show them
what it’s like to get one of these things in your house. Leo Laporte uses a Casper mattress and you know that Leo only
likes the finest things, which is why he uses Casper. Now it is obsessively
engineered and it is at a fair price because they do cut out the showroom, they
cut out the middleman said they can give you a factory direct price. It uses
two different types of technology. It uses late tax and memory foam. Latex is
what gives you that support and memory foam is what gives you that sort of
thinking and feeling. And when you combine the two it means you will get a
mattress that is soft but also gives you support. It feels good but is not
going to make you all sweaty in the middle of the night. This is what Casper is
good at and that is why we love having them on Know How. We’ve already
explained that you can buy it online, you can have it
delivered completely risk free. You can try it for over three months so that
you don’t have to lie down for a couple of seconds in a showroom, you can
actually try it and see if it is right for you. These mattresses are made in
the US which is something that we personally like. Here is what we want you to
do. We want you to take your sleep seriously. Get a Casper mattress, $500 for
twin size and $950 for queen-size. Compared to industry averages that is
actually really really good. And you can save an
additional $50 as one of our audience members by going to casper.com/knowhow an entering the promo code KnowHow. What are you
waiting for? go ahead and get a Casper mattress, try
it for three months and tell me if it is not the best investment you’ve ever
made. And we thank Casper for their support of Know How.

Fr.
Robert: Bryan,
we’ve got some questions.

Bryan: Are these from our Google Plus
community?

Fr.
Robert: This is all
from the Google plus community. Remember, we are going to tell you this at the
end that we will mention it now. Go to Google plus and look for the Know How group.
We are over 8300 members and it is a great place to ask us questions, if you
ask a good question we will try to get it into the show. Here is the first one.

Bryan: First question comes from Cameron.
He would like to know if he put LEDs on his Alien X it could connect him
directly to the power or distribution board. “If I want to connect them using a
switch on the transmitter, what do I need”?

Fr.
Robert: This is a
good question. He wants the lights. This is something that we play with. At the
very beginning, one of the very first mods I made, is I added LEDs. Now LEDs
are cheap. These are some red and blue LEDs that you can buy in a roll. The
nice thing about this is that this whole roll was seven dollars. These are all
surface mount. They have adhesive on the back so that you can just stick it to
the frame. These will actually just solder straight into your power
distribution system. Which is what I did because it is the
simplest way to do it and it keeps the weight down. That is blue, these
are read and I think I have some old bright whites. It is a really cool way to
add a little bit of splash to your quad. Especially at night.

Bryan: I would add them, now only for
splash but just so you know which is the front and which is the back.

Fr.
Robert: Exactly.
That is something that a lot of the pre-manufactured quads will have. They will
have different lights on the front in the back so that you know which way it is
facing.

Bryan: It helps a lot. The colored
propellers will only do so much from a distance.

Fr.
Robert: Especially
if it is dark.

Bryan: Yeah, if it is dark…

Fr.
Robert: Forget it.
You definitely want to have LEDs. I know you have found this before, if you get
far enough away and you can’t really tell you kind of give this stick a little
jiggle to see which way it goes and then you try to correct and hope you
correct the right way. I've seen people crash because they just keep getting
further and further away.

Bryan: What I like to do is have a color
in the back and a different color in the front and maybe a landing strip with
the white light so that if you are landing in a dark field you can kind of see
what is going on below you.

Fr.
Robert:Which is why we’ve got this. We’ve got blue, we’ve got red
and now we’ve got white. These are all weatherized so these are a little bit
heavier duty. It will give you a nice view of what orientation your quad is in
without having to actually jiggle it. But, what the poster wanted was a way to
turn them on and off. Because in this way the only way to
turn them on and off is to unplug them. I put a plug so we could go into
the harness.

Bryan: And he wants them on his
transmitters.

Fr.
Robert: That is
actually kind of cool. Well all you need is one of
these. This is a Turnigy receiver, this is a radio
controlled on and off switch. It looks like a tiny little electronic speed
controller. It has one lead that goes into the receiver so I can turn it on and
off and then this is just a switch. So when it is on, power goes through and
when it is off power doesn’t go through.

Bryan: That is awesome. You could use it
for something other than LEDs too right?

Fr.
Robert: This
specific one was actually designed to run a smoke machine. So
that you can say turn on smoke.

Bryan: And spell out something in the sky?

Fr.
Robert: Exactly.
But that is all this is. A fancy switch. Now, the cool
thing about a project like this is I’m going to use this to turn my lights on
and off. But as you've figured out, I could do pretty much anything. So if I
want to control a winch, if I want to control the smoke machine.

Bryan: Or if you had a smaller quad
attached to the bottom of the quad that you wanted to deploy in midair.

Fr.
Robert: Or if maybe
one of us tried and experimented with putting a Airsoft
gun on a quad?

Bryan: Whatever you need a switch for. Pretty cool. How much is that?

Fr.
Robert: This I got
on eBay for a think seven dollars.

Bryan: It doesn't look like you would be
adding any weight.

Fr.
Robert: It is not a
lot of weight.

Bryan: The hardest part would be threading
the wire.

Fr.
Robert: This will
add a tiny bit of weight, but not a lot. You were talking about maybe for the
entire assembly 50 g. So for a 250 you might fill it a tiny bit but probably
not. In a 450 class you wouldn’t feel it. It doesn’t matter. All right so that
is getting lights, what else do we have?

Bryan: This one comes from Terry
Henderson. I stole your picture off of twitter and I have one question. How
would you ever troubleshoot for a broken patch cable?

Fr.
Robert: This is a
very good question. Actually, that is why I brought out a little something something. Go ahead and show that picture. It is a
beautiful picture. I don’t think I have ever seen anything that pretty. It is
kind of mesmerizing. And there are a couple of things here that I really like.
I love the fact that it is so neat and clean. I don’t like using zip ties into
racks like that because it can make it kind of troublesome. But, this is a work
of art. But the poster, Terry, has a very good question. Which is, if one of
these broke how would you know? If one of them got detach from one end how
would you find it?

Bryan: I would just cry. I’m out.

Fr.
Robert: We actually
showed you the tool already when we showed you this. Unfortunately I may have
broken this since the last time I had it.

Bryan: How would you have done now? What
were you doing?

Fr.
Robert: A bottle of
Coke. I cleaned it up but it is not working quite right.

Bryan: Did you use your three tap system
before you opened it?

Fr.
Robert: No. It
wasn't my soda. Someone put a bottle of soda in my gig bag and it blew up. It
got too hot. I was sabotaged. remember we used this
when we were doing premise wiring because it would tell you whether or not you
did a right patch.

Bryan: And we played with the cable that I
made.

Fr.
Robert: It was very
unhappy.

Bryan: Yeah I didn’t like that. So this
one in your right hand is the one we could use a radio signal to?

Fr.
Robert: This is a
probe. And this will actually send signal. So what I can do if I set this to
that musical thing, I can actually put this into one of the wires. I find one
end of the cable that I am having issues with and hopefully it will work, if I
turn on the probe. That is coming off the cable so if I go to the other end of
the trunk here, ideally this would be far away. If I get close to the trunk it
gets louder and louder. So when it gets really loud this goes up to eight and
it tells me that is the cable that is wrong. This is a very common tool. It is
a nice way to figure out what goes where if you haven’t labeled things
properly.

Bryan: Okay. So say that we have the
situation with all those cables would you have to plug that into every one?

Fr.
Robert: No because
ideally what would happen is something would break and you would lose service
on one of your devices. You take the cable out of that device.

Bryan: You know which cable it was,
they’re just trying to figure out where that cable went wrong.

Fr.
Robert: Right. So
for example let’s say a computer uses connectivity. I can plug this into the
cable connector of that computer and go down and then start waving my wand
around to find where it is.

Bryan: Okay, that makes sense.

Fr.
Robert: There we
go. It is not the best, especially when you spill soda. But it is a good way to
do it.

Bryan: We have another question. This one
is about 3-D printing. Actually two questions. This comes from Donald. “Has
anyone ever bought from shapeways.com? It seems to be some sort of 3-D print on
demand service”. Have you, Padre?

Fr.
Robert: Yes.

Bryan: Okay. So?

Fr.
Robert: So, Shapeways is interesting. This was before people could buy
inexpensive 3-D printers. It is also a place where you can get much higher 3-D
print quality items. So, you send them your design, it is the same design you
would use on your 3-D printer, but they have much higher machinery which means
they can give you a lot of details. It is absolutely gorgeous. They use
top-notch materials and you can get superfine details. Essentially it is a fast
prototyping shop. Send them what you want and they will build it for you.

Bryan: Because you may or may not have a
3-D printer on premises but you want something to try out.

Fr.
Robert: And this is
also a market place. So if you make something that you think people might want
to buy you can market it there.

Bryan: That is so cool. I never thought
about train stuff.

Fr.
Robert: this is the
thing about the 3-D printing revolution. Which is, it is now
anything. Really anything you can think of you can print. I used shape
ways before because I needed to make some objects with a
really fine tolerances. And even a good 3-D printer is going to give you
some birth. It is not always the nicest print that you can possibly get. I just
got delivered..just this
second. Wait hold on My notebook is really sharp. Can
I use your razor thin MacBook air? That actually worked. So this is something
that Zach ordered from Shapeways. I have no idea what
this is.

Bryan: Can we open it, Zach?

Zach: Yes you can open it. I will tell
you guys what it is.

Fr.
Robert: What is
this that?

Zach: You won’t be able to recognize it.

Bryan: I know exactly what this is.

Zach: Well Bryan knows what it is.

Fr.
Robert: I know that
that part goes into this part.

Bryan: I think it is something to go into
your Nerf gun.

Zach: Yes. These are custom printed parts
to modify this Nerf guns so that I can take out this rotating chamber it and
attach three more onto it.

Fr.
Robert: Let me grab
a demonstration of the 3-D print that we got from our machine. Our machine is
pretty dang good.

Bryan: These things that you ordered Zach, look like they were printed from a mold. They don’t
look like the things we created.

Fr.
Robert: This is
actually pretty good. That, you can see it. Right off
the bat you can see how much nicer the surface is on Shapeways parts than on the 3D printed parts.

Bryan: You can’t see any… it just looks
like it was from a mold. It is awesome.

Fr.
Robert: I actually
think this is using their other machine so it is not 3-D prints it is a laser
that goes into a VAT of emulsion and it actually just pulls the printout. It
just builds that there and pulls it out.

Bryan: That is incredible.

Fr.
Robert: It gives
you super fine detail. This will get you down to .1 mm and I think this will
get you down to something like .001 mm.

Bryan: That is pretty cool. I can see
where Shapeways would be pretty useful.

Fr.
Robert: Actually,
what a lot of people will do is they will use a 3-D printer to come up with
something that they want and they will make sure it is right. Because, Shapeways is a little expensive and once they have the
design exactly the way they want it, they will send it to Shapeways.

Zach: Just to show you guys real quick
this is what the….

Bryan: Jeez, man that looks like overkill.

Fr.
Robert: All right.
We had a two pointer right?

Bryan: The second part of the question
was, “What you recommend for a good starter 3-D printer for a guy on a budget?
I see that Padre is really into da Vinci Junior and at $350 that is the price
point that is reasonable for my budget. However, I heard somewhat negative
things about them, that they are very proprietary/not open, etc. Comments and suggestions”?

Fr.
Robert: Okay, so
here is what I would say. Yes they got proprietary on the filament. I will also
say I have already busted the DRM on that. I don’t think I can actually show
people. I was checking this and I think it actually would be a violation. So, but. It might leak out at some point. On
a blog or host.

Bryan: Were not like into hacking.

Fr.
Robert: We only use
things for their intended purpose.

Bryan: I think the da Vinci Junior, the way
they went about it was great, the price is terrific, the print head is great, the way that you are able to just print the file on an SD
card and plug it into the device is great, it is just that one thing. It left a
bad taste in my mouth.

Fr.
Robert: It is like
the Kuerig 2.0 machines. Where it
is actually a pretty good machine. The day DRM’d the coffee pods, and it’s like why would you do that? You are just going to
take us off.

Bryan: You know there is something like
80’s guy in the corporate office…

Fr.
Robert: This idea
has never been used. I will say this. Someone pointed out the fact that you can
now get a da Vinci 1.0 for about the same price as a da Vinci Junior. Just because prices are going to drop. It is not as advanced
in some aspects but the da Vinci 1.0 will actually print out ABS and PLA. So
you can get both types of material. ABS tends to have a bit more flexibility to
it so it acts more like plastic. It is not as advanced in terms of the head and
the feeding system, but those are both pretty good options. And you can defeat
the DRM. Don’t be too concerned about that.

Bryan: Don't let that would you back. I
guess for the other da Vinci if you really needed something with the ABS. PLA
seems pretty solid.

Fr.
Robert: It seems
pretty solid. One of the things that people don’t like about PLA is that unlike
ABS it doesn’t flex it, it breaks. But it is super strong but it will just
snap. Versus ABS. ABS acts like what you would expect plastic to act like but
it will flex before it breaks.

Bryan: We were going to try to print in
3-D props.

Fr.
Robert: You
probably want to do that in ABS. You probably don’t want to do that in PLA.
Actually, I just wouldn’t do it. They are so cheap.

Bryan: It is just a question I’ve had.

Fr.
Robert: Oh my gosh. You are going to save yourself $.10.

Bryan: Okay the frame. If you are going to
3-D print the frame.

Fr.
Robert: Which I
actually have already done. I crashed a few. By the way, there are a couple of
people in our group who are crashing a lot. You should probably use a 3-D
printer frame because you crash a lot. Which is good.

Bryan: Or play with the Styma if you are feeling a little bit rusty. Fly that
around for 15 minutes before you go out and fly your expensive 250. Final question.Card charging my
batteries.“ I got the IMAX B6 charger but I
would like to be able to plug it into the car. Is there an adapter for that?”

Fr.
Robert: The answer
to that is yes. Absolutely. This is the charger that
most of us have. This is an official IMAX B6 and you can tell because it
actually has a code on the back that you can verify against their server to
tell you it is an official and not a counterfeit. I only buy the official ones
because the counterfeit ones burnout.

Bryan: Is that a really big problem?
Counterfeits?

Fr.
Robert: That is a
very big problem. Counterfeits are just not as good.

Bryan: I understand the counterfeits would
be a problem, but there are a lot of counterfeits of these sort of things?

Fr.
Robert: There are fa more counterfeits than there are originals. That, it
accepts 12 V which is actually the voltage you are going to get out of your
car. So all you need is something like this. I just had this lying around my
lab because I’ve got everything. But, if you were to go into a RadioShack and
they still exist, and say you are just looking for something that goes into
this same power port and I can plug it straight into my car. There is one
caveat and that is how much power you can actually draw from your cars
accessory port. Now, it is safe at one amp. So if you set this for 1C charging
no problem. But that is kind of slow. What you might actually want to do is
look at your cars manual, it may tell you how much Juice you can pull through
your accessory port. If it doesn’t tell you that, look in your manual to tell
you which cues in the fuse box is tied to the accessory port. Because you can
look at that and say if it is a 10 amp that means I can pull 120 W because it
is 12 old’s, through my system before I blow that pews. And the fuse is always
set lower than the cabling because you don’t want the cabling to blow. You want
to fuse to burnout. Now that is not the pure number because most cars will also
route other things through that assessor report. But I would say if you got a
10 amp service on your accessory port, you should be able to pull half of that,
like 5 A or 60 W before you overload your car system.

Bryan: Charging on the go.

Fr.
Robert: Now we do
want to part with a parting shot. This is something that I found and it is
disgusting. What you are looking at is a picture, a little video from the
sewers of West London. Bryan, what do you think they might have in the sewers?

Bryan: I’m going to guess the things that
you normally find in a sewer. But maybe minus the alligators
that we typically see.

Fr.
Robert: This is
very indicative. We have this problem. Wet naps. Wet
naps are deadly to sewer. They called this thing a monster thing. This is 10
tons of wet naps and fat. Wet naps are the enemy of all sewers because they
don’t fall apart and they attract whales. So basically they become roadblocks
and then they glom onto things. This particular roadblock became 40 m long. It
was so heavy it actually broke apart a multi meter 70-year-old sewer pipe. And
it is going to cost them about half 1,000,000 pounds and two months to repair. Oh
by the way we should probably tell people please don’t watch this while you are
eating.

Bryan: If you are planning on eating
anytime in the next week, don’t watch this video. Do they eat a lot a barbecue
wings? Something that you need wet naps around for?

Fr.
Robert: The funny
part is we have been told wet naps are nice and sanitary. They are demons spawn
for sewer. They don’t fall apart, they don’t biodegrade and they are strong
enough so that they will start to attach to one another and then they just form
this big monster.

Bryan: A grave mine from Halo or
something.

Fr.
Robert: Give me a
moment. Okay now that we have left you with that.

Bryan: The poor drone has to go down
there.

Fr.
Robert: I hope it
was a robot.

Bryan: There is no way they would send a
person down there is there? No.

Fr.
Robert: Stop. Stop.
Stop. Okay folks know that you are completely grossed out that is the end of
the show. We know that this was a lot of material, actually this was a particularly long show. If you want to find out what we
covered, if you want to see the instructions for putting together his Game Boy,
my thrust tester, or if you want to look at the questions that we covered in
the feedback, you’ve got to go to our show notes which is where?

Bryan: At twit.tv/KH and not only can you
find our show notes but you can find handy links to subscribe to which ever
audio or video, you should probably subscribe to video, that you prefer but not
only that If we are doing and over arcing project like we have been doing with
these quad copters you will definitely want to go back and make sure you didn’t
miss an episode. And that is not the only place you can find us.

Fr.
Robert: No, you are
going to find us on our Google plus group. Go to Google plus and look for Know
How, we’ve got It is a lot of quad copters right now but we also get a lot of
networking questions. If you have got questions, if you have a project that you
want to show off that you have done or if you want to ask for emergency help
for a project that is falling apart. This is a great community to belong to.

Bryan: Or if you're like Michael Hertz who
happens to keep breaking his quad a lot, we actually like to see this so keep
posting those. But we do feel a little bad.

Fr.
Robert: We do feel
bad but we do say that crashing is learning. Now, Google plus isn't the only
place you can find us you can also find us on Twitter. @PadreSJ.

Bryan: I’m @cranky_hippo and since We don’t have Alex tonight we should
definitely introduce Zach.

Fr.
Robert: Zach do you
have a camera on yourself? But could you please tell the folks were they could
find you on twitter?

Zach: Oh you know I have a camera on
myself. And you can find me on Twitter @eskimozach. Thanks
guys for the fun show today.

Fr.
Robert: Now one
last bit. And that is in two days, so this Saturday, May 2, we are going to have the premiere episode of the new screensaver. And you are
going to love it. With Leo Laporte and friends. We will be Contributing on and off
and you will see us as cohosts and segment contributors. If you watched any of
the goodness back in the old tech TV days, we are bringing it back. I am so
excited about this I just want to talk about it.

Bryan:Me had a
lot of fun making the opening to the show. it is a
very strange feeling. I watched Screensavers when I was in high school and now
I'm participating in it.

Fr.
Robert: I remember
I was so happy because I got tickets to go watch it on a live taping.

Bryan: It is cool and it is going to be a
lot of fun. We hope you tune in, watch it and subscribe.